The present invention relates generally to aircraft and more specifically to missiles that are borne aloft by and released from a carrier aircraft. Currently there are no air launch vehicles, i.e. cruise type aircraft with a turbojet engine, that can be carried and air launched as a 500 pound bomb. Prior art air launch vehicles have been disclosed but have been found to be unacceptable for various reasons. For instance, a swept wing design has been disclosed in the prior art in which two separate wings are positioned on top of the aircraft and are deployed when the aircraft is released from its carrier to a free flight position in which the wings are swept aft. This design suffers from the disadvantage that the wing cord dimension is approximately half of the fuselage width due to the fact that both separate wings must be stored adjacent each other on top of the vehicle. Other airborne missile designs such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,876,677 suffer from the inherent disadvantage of decreased packing density capability. Thus, an insufficient number of such airborne missiles can be carried by the carrier aircraft to render its mission effective.